


Hack The Gods

by ktccd



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Third Person, Pesterlog(s) (Homestuck), Prinat Swears A Lot, Why Did I Write This?, no beta we die like men, no canon characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:13:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27936937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktccd/pseuds/ktccd
Summary: Four trolls are aiming to play a new game and four humans aim to get involved.But perhaps that's for the best anyway? Especially when the game seems doomed to otherwise fail.
Relationships: Alex & Anna & Gary & Isak, Anna Cooley (OC) & Heliax Katmaz (OC), Mirane Portas (OC) & Ordnel Format (OC)
Kudos: 3





	1. Alex Turner

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at a homestuck fic, and boy is it a DOZY to try and get the proper colours and such to work in AO3!  
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy my nonsense, lemme know what you think! ^_^

#  Hack The Gods, Ch. 1: Alex Turner

A teenager with short, white hair and light blue eyes is sitting at their computer, fervently typing away so fast that every third word is misspelled. None of the lights are on inside their room, leaving their stark white skin coloured briefly by the various web-pages opening and closing as they are browsing, while another screen shows a DRAWING APPLICATION.

This person's name is ALEX TURNER and it is their birthday today. Specifically since three hours ago, as they have not slept a wink. They have a variety of INTERESTS, far too many some would say. They like to spend many hours POSTING STRONG OPINIONS ON THE INTERNET. They PRACTICE PARKOURING even though they rarely have time for it. They are an ASPIRING ARTIST who draws things for/of their friends. They love VARIOUS FANFICTION, particularly ROMANTIC NONSENSE. They love to COOK out of necessity, as they live on their own. They GET INVOLVED IN THEIR FRIENDS SHENANIGANS even when their involvement is not wanted nor useful. They have a STRANGE SENSE OF HUMOR caused by sleep-deprivation. They can never seem to FINISH THEIR MANY CRAFTING PROJECTS.

Their many interests take up roughly twenty-five hours per day, which perplexes all digital schedulers they have tried to employ. This is why they have not slept, as they have promised their friends another of their ROMANTIC FANART DRAWINGS depicting each one of them making out with a knuckle-sandwich.

In hindsight, this is not a very romantic drawing, but this is what they find absolutely hilarious right now.

They are in the middle of drawing the IMMACULATE DETAILS of CHRISTIAN BALE'S fist knocking out one of their friends when their REALMCHATTER application begins to beep. Considering the time, they think they know who it is.

\-- anomalousTailor  [AT]  began chatting with chronosAbscence  [CA]  at 03:04 --  
  
AT: I see you're up early today. Or did you not sleep at all since we spoke last?  
CA: hi i didnt but im almostd one with you'rs  
AT: You know that's not how you spell half those words, right? Anyway, I didn't come here to complain about your grammar. I am here to say congratulations on finally joining the rest of us in no longer being a toddler. My gift to you will arrive with the rest of them, I hope.  
CA: wow, you didnt have to you know  
CA: i never saidw hat i wanted how would you know???  
AT: I guessed. You haven't exactly been subtle about your interests, of which you have far, far too many.  
CA: no way its great!!! oh man this is going to be great im fifteen now!!!  
AT: Or 6.92 sweeps.  
CA: did you use a calculater for that??  
AT: Does an application count if it converts it for me?  
CA: yes  
CA: *slurps coffee*  
AT: You really just took the time to emote that you're drinking coffee, even though you cannot find the time to install that spellchecker?  
AT: Also, I take it this means you aren't planning on sleeping anytime soon?  
CA: sleep is for the weak!! ill rest when im dead!  
CA: also i am done, check this image out!!!  
  
\-- chronosAbscence  [CA] sent file "LOL THIS IS YOU" to anomalousTailor  [AT]  \--  
  
AT: Very funny.  
CA: aww dont be mad its a joke lol  
AT: I didn't mean it sarcastically. I choked on my breakfast due to laughing too hard. Is this why you have stayed awake tonight?  
CA: This and annas and garys  
CA: oh and mirane but i still cant send it to her client  
AT: Yes, we're still working on that, this app is in beta still, after all. It is a bit difficult when Prinat is so busy on their side.  
AT: I realise game development is, quote, "Serious Business", unquote, but you'd think she wouldn't have dumped the entire development of the chat application on me.  
CA: lol you just wrote quote unquote when were talking in text to begin with  
CA: and you call mirane theatrical  
CA: but speaking of prinat, if you get the file sending working we could get in on their game right?  
AT: We could use the Room for sending that, but I would have to find a way to even run it on our computers and I have no idea how to port a game.  
AT: Also I am completely uninterested in what *they* would consider entertaining.  
CA: aww come on can't you convince her to let us play??  
AT: No, I can't *make* Prinat do anything.  
CA: thats a lie ;)  
CA: you always make people dos tuff  
CA: what if its for my birthday? could be youre present to get me invited?  
CA: pleeeeeeeassseeeeee?  
AT: ...  
AT: I'll think about it. But you should go to bed before Anna wakes up or she might do something dumb as her present to you.  
CA: tytytyty!! also goodnight!!  
  
\-- anomalousTailor  [AT]  ceased  chatting with chronosAbscence  [CA]  at 03:30 --

No matter what they said to their friend, Alex is not going to bed. In fact, they are doing the opposite, downing the remainder of their now-cold coffee.

Alex grabs their empty mug and CAPTCHALOGUES it into their SYLLADEX, entering the date and time they will need it later for the CALENDAR FETCH MODUS. They set it to two minutes from now, that should be enough time to walk to the kitchen.

As they navigate the DIMINUTIVE APARTMENT they live in, Alex climbs over and under many of their HALF-FINISHED PROJECTS before getting their pants snagged on a broom-handle in the shape of ALEX JONES.

They curse their fickle desires and short attention span, for having had such awful taste in broom handle carving to have led to this event.

They struggle to free their pant leg only for them to fall forwards into a pile of ABANDONED ANT FARMS. These ant farms have been abandoned for so long that the ruins of their lost civilization have been re-discovered by modern ANT-ARCHEOLOGISTS and plundered by ANT-INDIANA-JONES.

After freeing themselves from their ant-covered doom, Alex is finally standing outside their kitchen. The kitchen is also filled with too many things, mostly clever devices they funded on PUNCHSTARTER that promise to make cooking faster, but have instead taken up so much space that cooking now resembles a terrible minigame.

Just as they grab ahold of the LARGE EXTRA-FUN ICECREAM-MAKER to move it away from the COMPACT DISHWASHER, Alex's SYLLADEX pings loudly. Since their hands are currently full, the mug is launched away from them at high speed, crashing into a wall and shattering.

There is now even more of a mess in the kitchen.

Alex's STRESS-LEVEL goes from SLIGHT HEADACHE to TWITCHING EYE as they begin to collect the pieces of broken porcelain and throw it in the garbage. They click a button on the AUTO-TOASTER-INATOR so it can save them time by making breakfast in only half an hour.

In the meantime, it's best if they head back to their bedroom and pretend to have just awoken before their friend Anna wakes up. Alex rushes past their labyrinth of projects with only two delaying antics before they arrive at their computer. Someone has already sent them a message.

\-- terribleAcquaintance  [TA] began chatting with chronosAbscence  [CA]  at 03:35 --  
  
TA: ALEX! Why are you up so late?! OMG you're crazy sometimes!  
TA: You there? Alex? :S  
TA: Well, anyway, gratz on your birthday! I hope you like my present! :D  
TA: I'm sending it with the other things, so if there are any claw marks on it or something, blame Prinat!  
CA: hi anna!! i just woke up lol  
CA: ty ty ty ty for the gz!!  
CA: i just fell into my ant farms and broke my mug lol  
CA: stupid calendar  
TA: That Fetch Modus is literally the worst one possible for you. You should have gotten one like mine!  
CA: lol yours always does its own thing tho  
CA: unreliable ;)  
TA: Well, I hope you like my little present then! :D  
TA: Anyway, I've gotta brb to get my breakfast or I'll miss it!  
CA: ttyl!!  
TA: Bye!  
  
\-- terribleAcquaintance  [TA] ceased chatting with chronosAbscence  [CA]  at 03:55 --

Anna is definitely a great friend. All of Alex's friends are great, in fact. Well, Heliax is a bit scary, but that's probably just part of his "style".

A sudden beeping from Alex's kitchen, alerting them that their breakfast is now done and will continue to be cooked until burned to an inedible crisp. This was marketed as a bonus "feature" of the device.

They best hurry before they lose their toast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First chapter in the bank!  
> I've also made some images of the characters using this tool: http://www.farragofiction.com/DollSim/
> 
> So here's Alex Turner and their Echeladder  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

#  Hack The Gods, Ch. 2: Anna Cooley

In the middle of a forest glade lies a chunk of concrete. It looks like someone has ripped a chunk out of an apartment complex and thrown it in the forest in a fit of anger. This apartment, while slightly tilted, is heavily decorated with various bones, ropes, shiny objects and traps made out of said things.

It may be a mess of a home, but this is where a teenager named ANNA COOLEY lives. She is a green-eyed, young woman with long, braided black hair and a stark white complexion who dresses in HOME-MADE LEATHER AND FUR CLOTHING.

She has a number of INTERESTS which she stays on top of at all times. She believes in THINGS OF A MYSTICAL NATURE and likes to consider herself something of a SKILLED DRUID. She calls herself that because of her tendency to play DICE-BASED ROLE-PLAYING GAMES. She also likes to HUNT as well as FORAGE FOR FOOD.

Anna has just gotten off of her computer, which lay cobbled together on a stack of bricks she found. She has no idea where the power in the outlets of her TILTING APARTMENT comes from, but it seems to work sporadically.

She has to send her friend their present, but first she needs to catch her breakfast!

Anna checks her SYLLADEX for her STRIFE DECK, making sure that her ELVEN CHILD'S BOW is still there in its BOWKIND STRIFE SPECIBUS and has enough arrows before she stalks out into the forest. It wouldn't do to travel unarmed in this forest.

She finds her first trap, triggered but with no prey in it; Some of the critters in this forest are too smart for her tricks, even with all the weird symbols she writes on the traps. She sniffs intently at the tracks before licking them.

BLECH!

It tastes like dirt, but at least she gave the ol' "wise hunter" schtick a try. Some day she'll pull it off.

She's stalking through the forest, quietly moving while barely making a sound as she checks her traps and resets the triggered ones. It doesn't take long before she spots a deer-like creature with massive, spiky horns. Without the horns, it easily towers above her by a few inches, but with them it is more than twice her height. How such a creature can move around in the thick forest is probably nonsense.

Most of the dangerous prey in this forest are full of nonsense.

Anna strings her bow and pulls out an arrow, ready to throw down with today's breakfast, lunch and dinner when her SYLLADEX'S FATE FETCH MODUS decides to pop out a stack of old bones. It really picked a terrible time, as the creature turns towards the source of the clattering noise and charges with its head lowered, pointy horns towards her.

Anna unequips her bow, grabbing a thick femur from the pile and rolls low on the ground. She barely scrapes by, missing the horns, twisting and turning as she rolls to avoid the deadly hooves. Flipping back up on her feet, she swings the bone at the creature's face just as it turns, the resulting hit sending it sprawling on the ground and flailing in a panic while the bone snaps in half.

She screams while leaping up on the flailing beast, stabbing down at it with the boneshard until it ceases to move. Afterwards, she puts her weapon back into her BONEKIND STRIFE SPECIBUS and pulls out a length of rope to tie up the body with and begins to drag it home.

After managing her catch and filling the freezers and fridge of her home with fresh meat, Anna walks towards the back of her house, where an oddly spherical extension of the building exists.

It isn't made of concrete like the rest of her home, instead it is made of some kind of silvery, shiny metal. She has no idea what it is or how it works, but she uses the room to send and receive stuff from her friends.

Like now, in the middle of the room, are three wrapped presents. One is clearly wrapped in some strange, olive-coloured, plastic material. With no strings needed to hold it together, it must have been from Ordnel and a quick peek at the attached card with indecipherable, greenish writing tells her that it is. How thoughtful of him to send a card, even if none of them can read it. He had been really interested in the birthday preparation when they told him, even if he had issues keeping track of when it was or really what the point of it was.

The second package, on its own next to the olive one, is a very large package with a classic birthday theme of cakes, balloons and confetti on the wrapping paper. It looks like someone has wrapped a TV or something. The card attached is signed in Isak's name and sealed with some kind of tape. Tricky to open without breaking it.

The last package is this gaudy, reddish-purplish-pinkish mess of some kind of leather wrapped around something big and bulky the size of her head. Whatever it was, it had to come from Mirane. She didn't really "get it" when it came to birthdays, but seemed to have interpreted it to be some form of organised bribery in exchange for friendship. None of the kids had chosen to correct her so far.

Anna grabbed her own wrapping supplies, mainly one of the nicer furs she had prepared and waited for a moment. Before she had time to grow bored with waiting, she sat down next to her computer. The gift will arrive when it is time, supposedly.

Meanwhile, her REALMCHATTER application had new messages:

\-- anomalousTailor  [AT]  began chatting with terribleAcquaintance  [TA]  at 05:00 --  
  
AT: Good morning, miss Druid.  
AT: Did my package arrive properly? Mirane will not give me a straight answer if she did anything to it.  
TA: Hello there, dear Tailor, how's the clothing business? ;)  
TA: Also it arrived just fine, she's just messing with you like usual ^_^  
AT: I wish she didn't. It wastes everyone's time.  
AT: But I understand she finds it funny to irritate me.  
TA: You're too good of a target, nobody could resist poking fun at you at least a little bit. ;)  
TA: Anyway, I'm just waiting for the time to be right to send off my package and then it's in Prinat's hands.  
AT: Any chance the right time will be soon?  
TA: It'll happen when it happens :P  
TA: Meanwhile, any chance I could get some help to install that game Prinat keeps bragging about? (TnT)  
AT: Why does everyone come to *me* to ask about Prinat's things?  
AT: And I don't know. Alex already asked me about it. I'm working on it.  
TA: I asked you because Prinat sent me a severed skull last time I bothered her about it.  
TA: It was a nice gesture, except it *wasn't an animal* skull.  
TA: X_X  
AT: What's wrong with that? You hunt things as well.  
TA: For food! I don't go around hunting just for the sake of it!  
AT: …  
AT: That might have been my bad then.  
AT: I might have implied that you collect bones and skulls of mystical and strange variants.  
AT: She might have meant it as a friendly gesture. Sorry.  
TA: Well, no worries. Do try and correct her before she sends me another skull of her neighbours, alright?  
AT: Will do.  
AT: By the way, you may wish to chat with Gary, he's starting to send me messages to tell you to hurry up.   
TA: Alright, will do. Take care for now then!  
TA: \\(^_^)/  
  
\-- anomalousTailor  [AT]  ceased  chatting with terribleAcquaintance  [TA]  at 06:14 --

And just like that, Anna's FATE FETCH MODUS lets out a beep and drops a colourful block in her lap. Apparently, now is the time to send off her gift.

She quickly wraps it up in the fur and secures it using twine. There's no note, but Alex will get that it's from her. The back side of the fur even has some inscriptions for good luck and protection, that's as good as a signature from Anna.

She places it carefully in the pile of items in the strange room and exits it before clicking the huge button on the outside. It seals the door to the room before everything past the door, including the room itself, disappears in a bright flash of light.

Anna has absolutely no idea how it works, but she knows it always gets sent in the same order. From Isak to Mirane, to herself and then to Prinat. She can't remember who else is after that, but Alex should be somewhere a bit later.

This is their main method of sending things to and from each other, but they never successfully sent a living creature.

Mainly because the room begins to stab everything and hack it to pieces if it finds a living creature inside it when the button is pushed. They lost two rabbits and a deer that way, but at least Prinat appreciated the exotic food arriving in reasonably large chunks.

Now to check on Gary. He's probably asking if she sent the room away yet.

\-- auspiciousCultivator  [AC] began chatting with terribleAcquaintance  [TA]  at 05:59 --  
  
AC: Miss Anna? Are you there?  
AC: I'm asking because I need to send my package over to Alex as well, but if you're busy I can wait?  
TA: Hey there Gary, I just sent it off, no worries!  
TA: Prinat is probably going to be done quickly with hers and then whoever is after her gets it.  
AC: Uhm, after Prinat is me. Don't you have the order written down somewhere now?  
AC: It goes Me -> Heliax -> Alex ->Ordnel -> Isak -> Mirane -> You -> Prinat -> Me  
TA: I'll write it up on the wall!  
AC: That's a good idea. Anyway, do you think they'll like my gift?  
AC: I'm worried it'll come off as weird? Or what if it doesn't fit?  
TA: I told you, it should fit just fine!  
TA: They had issues with swimming earlier so it sounds like a very thoughtful idea.  
TA: That's the most important part when you give someone a gift!  
AC: Alright. I've already wrapped it up, just waiting for Prinat now.  
AC: I hope this goes well.  
TA: It will, now go get ready! I've got my morning meditation to get to!  
  
\-- auspiciousCultivator  [AC] ceased chatting with terribleAcquaintance  [TA]  at 07:33 --

Anna huffs slightly at Gary's worried attitude, but she supposes it can't be helped. She has no doubt his worries are unfounded however, because she was the one who got him the measurements to use.

Unless she messed up? Oh God that was a horrible thought. Then he'd feel terrible and it would be her fault!

She hurries back into her bedroom to check and make sure she got the measurements right, she just had to have gotten it right!

Before she could spiral into another fit of self-doubt, however, she saw her own reminders posted on the walls to stay calm. Friendly posters of kittens and other small prey being hung from ropes, reminding her to not freak out like she always does.

That helps her calm down a little and rather than panicking, she decides to sit down on her porch to take a moment to meditate and relax.in the morning sun. She's still covered in the blood of her breakfast, but she'll take a shower later.

She's got a feeling today is going to be a trying day for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Until next time, here's Anna Cooley and her Echeladder!  
> 


	3. Gary Fowler

#  Hack The Gods, Ch. 3: Gary Fowler

In the middle of an ocean lies a large, barren island with not a single plant to be seen and massively high, sheer cliffs leading to the briny waters. It is on top of this island that a large concrete slab lies, seemingly placed as if plucked from another location and torn off its foundations before being deposited in the middle of nowhere.

It is in this ISOLATED APARTMENT that there lives a red-eyed teenager named GARY FOWLER. He shares the same, stark white skin tone as some of his friends, but he likes to STYLE HIS WHITE HAIR after the MANY PICTURES HE COLLECTS. It is one of the few things in which he FEELS CONFIDENT of his skill.

By some chance, all of the pictures he had found when he began to cut his own hair showed only humans with large, pompadour-style haircuts, after which he has chosen to style himself.

Besides this, he has many INTERESTS, chief among which is his desire for HORTICULTURE, which he is awful at. He also likes to EXPERIMENT WITH UNKNOWN DEVICES that he finds sometimes in the UNDERGROUND COVE beneath his home. He is fond of STRANGE ARCHITECTURE and likes to spend his time BROWSING THE INTERNET randomly.

He has just finished a conversation with his friend Anna and is considering bothering his other friend Prinat, but then thinks better of it. She's always intimidated him, even if they are supposed to be friends.

Speaking of the Devil, his REALMCHATTER application just notified him of a message from her.

\-- armoredGenius [AG]  began chatting with auspiciousCultivator  [AC] at 07:50 --  
  
AG: Oi. Anti-Cultivator.  
AG: >:(  
AG: I. Know. You're. There. I. See. Your. Status.  
AC: Uhm, hi Prinat, what's up?  
AG: What. Strife. Specibus. Does. The. Stress. Human. Use?  
AC: You mean Alex?  
AG: Yes! >:O  
AC: Staffkind, I think?  
AG: Staffkind? Not. Even. A. Spear?  
AG: Lame.  
AG: I. Got. It. Ready. For. The. Room?  
AG: Sending. It. Anyway.  
AG: Remember. To. Send. It. Afterwards.  
  
\-- armoredGenius [AG]  ceased chatting with auspiciousCultivator  [AC] at 08:01 --

Well, she was friendlier than usual.

After the chat closes, Gary walks through his home's many weird and claustrophobic corridors to reach the extension where the silvery, spherical room has arrived.

He finds that there are five gifts already in there. The massive, stick-shaped object must be Prinat's gift, as she hasn't wrapped it. It seems to be a thick spear with the head broken off to make a staff, three meters long.

An experimental attempt at lifting it from the floor reveals that it weighs just as much as it looks and he has trouble even picking it up. How Alex is supposed to use it, he has no idea, but maybe Prinat sent it as a sort of gag gift?

Either way, he leaves it and returns to one of the many hidden compartments in his home, this one is part of the wall near the room. Inside it is the piece of clothing he spent all of yesterday on convincing his MYSTIC  INFINI-CLOTHIER to make. The odd, bathtub-shaped wardrobe was always finicky about making things, but Anna had gotten him the measurements from Alex themselves.

Hopefully without letting it slip exactly what they would be used for, although he has a feeling Alex might already have guessed. After all, making a binder they could use while swimming needed pretty accurate measurements, but he doesn't know how Anna got them.

Maybe she just asked straight out? It was too awkward of a question for him to ask, so he used the surprise of the birthday gift as an excuse for why he couldn't ask himself.

Enough stalling; it's sink or swim. He hopes he doesn't look like a terrible friend.

Gary wraps the clothing item up neatly in red paper and seals it with some transparent tape before carefully placing it in the pile of gifts. There. Done. No picking it back up and second-guessing himself.

He walked back out of the room before hitting the button to send it on to its next destination and went back to his garden.

Or maybe he should call it a "garden"? It wasn't much of one after all, most of the plants having died off for some reason. He had tried many different things, but somehow the winds seemed to blow seasalt on them until they eventually withered. That might be why.

Gary sat down on a stool to mess with his SYLLADEX and retrieve his latest attempt: A glass dome to use as a miniature greenhouse. The only problem is that his FETCH MODUS is a very unpopular version of the PUZZLE model, with this one locking each item behind a convoluted puzzle that requires outside-the-box thinking to solve.

It is a pain, really, but he has gotten used to it. Not to say he is good at it, just that he doesn't want to bother his friends to get him another one.

After fiddling with the weird box-and-ring-on-a-string puzzle for a while, he finally solves it, releasing his little greenhouse to protect his tomato-plant.

If this works, he will have finally produced food on his own! Not that he disliked the food his friends sent him, it just… felt like he should be able to do something on his own once in a while.

Well, enough of this pity-party! Time to take action! But what to take action to do?

He could go water his plant, but to refill the watercan he'll need to go down to the UNDERGROUND COVE where the MODULAR DESALINATOR is.

The staircase below is eerie and DANGEROUSLY UNSAFE. Whoever designed this must not know that thin, slippery stairsteps are a bad combination with poor lighting. Or they did and they thought this would be funnier.

With careful steps, Gary begins descending the stairs into the cavernous underground, but just as he feared, one of the GIANT BAT-CREATURES that live here flies towards him, demanding to STRIFE.

He flicks his hand, bringing out his GENTLEMAN'S HAIRSTYLE SCISSORS from his STRIFE SPECIBUS, ready to throw down with this crazy fruit bat. With a crazy leap into the air, he swings the oversized scissors against its giant claws, before being flung back from the force of the collision.

Ok, maybe the crazy bats are still stronger than him. Change of plans!

With a pull and a twist, his scissors split into two 1/2scissorkind weapons known as the GENTLEMAN'S BOTCHED SHAVING KNIVES and the battle continues with renewed vigor!

Each lunge of the bat is barely deflected with a parry that rattles his bones, each swipe of his own hits tough-as-nails skin that hardly even leaves a mark but sheers off a little bit of fur.

Strike, dodge, swipe, parry, roll, leap, cut. Their deadly dance continues until finally, with one last cut, the GIANT BAT-CREATURE lets out a gleeful squeal as Gary deals his finishing blow, leaving the dumb thing with a sweet-as-heck pompadour on its head.

STRIFE-HAIRCUT ACHIEVED; LEVEL UP!

Gary has gone from FRILLY ANKLEBITER to POMPADOUR PLUCK. This affects many useless statistics that he isn't sure are metaphysically real. But whatever, the bat is leaving, probably to spread the word to its bat-friends about his awesome hair-styling skills. It's like, the one thing he feels confident in, everyone loves a sick hairstyle.

Once downstairs, the humongous MODULAR DESALINATOR blocks the path ahead. The control panel features over a dozen levers and buttons as well as a keyboard, yet the only way to make it do anything is to press the circular button with a picture of a water drop on it. All the other control features seem to do nothing except cause lights to blink or for beeping sounds to be made.

Gary still presses them, just in case, before he fills his can, and then in an act of forgetfulness he accidentally stores the FILLED WATERING CAN in his SYLLADEX, locking it behind another puzzle.

Great, that's probably inconvenient enough to warrant another trip down here just to be able to ignore the puzzle. He heads back up again, hoping for no further bat-shenanigans.

Luckily, it seems the coast is clear, for now, and Gary arrives safely upstairs. While passing through his bedroom on the way to the garden, his computer beeps from its place on the desk. It seems someone is trying to contact him,

\-- anomalousTailor  [AT]  began chatting with auspiciousCultivator  [AC] at 10:30 --  
  
AT: Good morning Gary. How are the sunflowers doing?  
AC: Oh, well, they died. Same as the others, actually.  
AT: That's a shame. Did you have time to try the greenhouse idea?  
AC: I just put it up over my tomato-plant, so I hope it works.  
AC: Uhm, so… what's up?  
AT: I'm just chatting to people.  
AT: Trying to assuage my own worries.  
AC: You're worried? Uhm… about what?  
AT: You know that game Heliax and the others are planning to play?  
AT: I'm slightly worried about their chances. You know how Troll games are.  
AT: They play for keeps, with their lives on the line.  
AC: You think they might… like, die? For real?  
AT: Oh Mirane and Prinat would probably do fine. I'm mostly worried about Heliax, although I do not want him to know.  
AT: It ruins my all-knowing persona of unshakable confidence.  
AC: Yeah, I can see that happening, heh… but, uhm, I gotta go grab a watering can to tend to my tomatoes, so like… I'll talk to you in a bit?  
AT: That's fine. I need to talk to some of the others too.  
  
\-- anomalousTailor  [AT]  ceased chatting with auspiciousCultivator  [AC] at 10:50 --

Now that sounded like trouble. As far as Gary knows, Isak never worries without reason. He never does anything without reason.

It might not be a bad idea to have a chat with Heliax, just in case?

\-- auspiciousCultivator  [AC] began chatting with gloriousCollector  [GC]  at 10:52 --  
  
AC: Hey, uhm, Heliax?  
AC: How dangerous is that game you're planning to play?  
GC: |--D *Turns towards Gary with a serious look on his face*  
GC: |--D By your standards I'd say it's very dangerous.  
GC: |--D By troll standards? I'd say not too bad?  
GC: |--D Why?  
AC: Ah, it just sounds like it might be risky, is all?  
AC: I'm a bit worried… You sure you'll be ok?  
GC: |--D I won't be alone, so I don't think it's too bad.  
AC: I know Mirane and Prinat are fine, but like, will you guys even be able to work together?  
GC: |--D *Seriously ponders the question for a while*  
GC: |--D I… I don't know, actually. But I'm not sure you understand how our games work, it's probably not as bad as you think.  
AC: I know, but… I think it might be serious though?  
GC: |--D *Waves his hand dismissively*  
GC: |--D I'm sure it'll be fine. Now, I still have things to do, so we may talk later.  
  
\-- auspiciousCultivator  [AC] ceased chatting with gloriousCollector  [GC]  at 11:12 --

Gary steps away from the computer with a sigh. He tried, at least. Hopefully they will be alright.

He runs off to refill another can with water, just to take his mind off of things.

How bad can their game be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boom, chapter three! Without much delays!  
> I have also gotten some art to show the characters!  
> Here's Gary Fowler and his Echeladder!  
> 


	4. Heliax Katmaz

#  Hack The Gods, Ch. 4: Heliax Katmaz

In a small HIVEBATCH lies a very peculiar BOOKHIVE. This structure is not open to the public in the usual sense, although it is unlocked and people are invited to visit. However, if they do visit, they will likely not leave, because this place has been claimed by a troll known as HELIAX KATMAZ and the KNOWLEDGE STACKS inside belong to him alone.

Well, him and his lusus, but he has not seen it in years. Probably dead, to be honest. He tries not to think about it.

Heliax dresses in plain, dark clothes with  golden  accents, displaying his symbol that vaguely resembles a shovel, at least he likes to think so. His orange-yellow horns stick up from his unruly mass of black hair and widens unexpectedly at the end to form a thin D shape. He has tried to tame his hair before but it never worked. He has since given up fighting his terrible hair genes.

He has a few INTERESTS which are clearly displayed in his home. He likes to COLLECT LOST ARTEFACTS AND OBSCURE KNOWLEDGE. Some people consider this simple GRAVEROBBING but he vehemently denies this. He likes to MAKE UP ELABORATE FICTIONAL STORIES about existing media, because it is essentially lying, which he is great at. He also likes to ROLEPLAY even though few people appreciate it. Should he survive until maturity, he will definitely work as an INFORMATION EXTRACUTIONER. He thinks SHOVELS are an underrated tool of violence, much like himself.

He has a selection of friends which he tolerates to various degrees, most of which aren't even trolls, which should say something about his species, he thinks. He doesn't know how come his REALMCHATTER application can communicate with the other species, but he CANNOT STAND Prinat's attitude enough to let her gloat about its functionality. Most attempts at communication between the two end with them both angry beyond belief.

But not, like, in that way, ew, gross.

His trolltag is  gloriousCollector and he talks in a way that  |--D Draws attention to his love of shovels an--D --Digging. He also lets his tendency to roleplay show when  *He feels like he is in the mood.*

He has been convinced by his troll friends to join their game, which they will send him soon, but his recent chat with the human named Gary has managed to erode his confidence a little. It might be best to speak to his nominal "leader" about it, but he thinks he should do things in order. First on the list of mistakes is to send a gift to the human whose "birthday" is today. Despite the ridiculous name of the celebration and its frankly nonsensical calendar, he has the perfect gift for them.

As he opens his SYLLADEX BOOKHIVE FETCH MODUS to withdraw his gift, he basks in the perfectness of it.

Obviously he could not give any of his personal treasures, the one-of-a-kind books he has collected or the rare and precious artefacts he has secured. But those things would be useless to a human.

No, what he has brought is a copy of MATNAR'S BASIC TROLL CULTURE KNOWLEDGE FOR ENSLAVED ALIEN RACES AND OTHER NON-FOOD CATTLE. The title isn't exactly accurate, because the real title would not fit on the front page, but it will do fine for humans to read. It's just that trolls generally only classify other alien races as either slaves, food, or target practice.

He wraps it up in a protective sleeve and writes his name on it, to ensure that gratitude is correctly funneled his way for this amazing gift, before he proceeds to the SPACE ADJACENT CULL ROOM, which his group of friends uses to teleport things between each other.

He looks over their gifts and his secondary vocal  chords let out a slight rumbling scoff before he places his own gift down on top of another. His gift is definitely the best one here so far. The humans could really do with some real culture in their lives and now they can get it. He leaves the room and clicks on the button to send it to the lucky human.

Now that that's finished, he can head back to his RESPITEBLOCK and chat with his less insufferable pals.

\-- gloriousCollector  [GC] began chatting with commandingGrandeur  [CG] at 11:42 --  
  
GC: |--D *Knocks politely at the commander's front door*  
GC: |--D Anyone home?  
CG: The Commander's here, what's going on?  
GC: |--D I have some growing concerns about the game we're planning to play.  
GC: |--D Specifically about our capabilities to survive it. Do we have any plans at all on what we're going to do?  
CG: You're questioning your Commander's ability to plan?  
GC: |--D *Sighs before nodding*  
GC: |--D Not in those exact words, but yes.  
CG: Fuck off. There's no need for a bunch of planning. We're going to play the game, kick its ass and grab sweet, sweet loot and glory.  
GC: |--D Yes, but what if, just if, anything and everything goes to shit?  
GC: |--D I'm just saying we should take things seriously.  
CG: We can just improvise something if it does. There's four of us, how hard can it be?  
GC: |--D *Sighs in exasperation*  
GC: |--D I don't know, I'm not the designer of the game, but considering Prinat's tastes I imagine it will be hard enough to cull half of us.  
GC: |--D Besides, it's usually the leader who makes backup plans in case  their incompetent engineer fucks up.  
CG: You have a point. The Commander will see about talking to their engineer.  
CG: By which they mean they will make Prinat do something about it.  
CG: Any other concerns?  
GC: |--D None.  
GC: |--D *Bids his commander goodbye and leaves back for his hive.*  
CG: Take care, nerd.  
  
\-- gloriousCollector  [GC] ceased chatting with commandingGrandeur  [CG] at 12:02 --

There. Done and done. Hopefully Mirane will take it seriously, but for now he considers talking to his more cultured friends. Or friend, singular. There's really only one person who shares his enjoyment of the fine arts.

\-- gloriousCollector  [GC] began chatting with terribleAcquaintance  [TA]  at 12:03 --  
  
GC: |--D *Arrives outside the Druid's hive and knocks on the wall.*  
GC: |--D Goo--D morning there! How has your morning hunt been?  
TA: *Opens her door, smiling widely as she shouts*  
TA: Amazing! I took down some kind of horny deer-beast! :D  
TA: Also, did you remember to send Alex their gift today?  
GC: |--D *Nods sagely*  
GC: |--D Of course I --Di--D, nobo--Dy has sent as thoughtful a gift as me.  
TA: >:/  
GC: |--D *Raises his hands placatingly*  
GC: |--D Although I am sure yours is also excellent, of course!  
TA: >:D  
TA: Close enough, I'll take it!  
TA: *Hugs her scholarly friend*  
TA: So, how's your day been? I already got to the most exciting planned event of my day after all.  
GC: |--D *Reciprocates the embrace*  
GC: |--D Our red-typing friend managed to get me worried enough about the upcoming game to bother Mirane about it.  
GC: |--D His concern seemed both sincere and warranted.  
GC: |--D You know I am fairly good at telling that sort of thing.  
TA: So serious stuff then? Think Mirane is up to solving it?  
GC: |--D Not alone, no. She acts high and mighty, but it's going to end up being Prinat who has to fix it.  
GC: |--D And maybe Isak, if he can stand her attitude.  
GC: |--D Hang on, someone's approaching my hive. Be back later, this might take a little while.  
  
\-- gloriousCollector  [GC] ceased chatting with terribleAcquaintance  [TA]  at 12:33 --

Heliax steps away from his PROCESSING HUSK as he hears someone's footsteps downstairs.

He equips his DEAD GRUB SHOVELLER from his STRIFE SPECIBUS and looks down over the protection fence at the curious intruder currently rifling through his less valuable bait-loot. With a glorious combat cry, he leaps over the protection fence and crashes into them, burying his shovel in their vacant grub-chute when they look upwards.

One intruder down for the count today, he wonders how many more graves he will have to dig in the backyard. Maybe he will need to expand his lawn ring later on…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's art of our first troll, Heliax Katmaz!  
> 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading my stuff! I hope to see ya next chapter!


	5. Mirane Portas

#  Hack The Gods, Ch. 5: Mirane Portas

A single UNDERWATER HIVE lies hidden among the coral reefs of Alternia, built out of oddly shaped blocks to accommodate the unusual addition of SUBMERSIBLE FLOATATION VEHICLES into its design. Though beautiful, these reefs are considered one of the deadliest places to live, as almost every species of beast that lives there is capable of culling a troll.

It is in this colourful place that a troll named MIRANE PORTAS lives and thrives. She never had a lusus, per se, but she didn't live alone. There used to be a troll who lived with her but they disappeared a sweep ago. She doesn't like to think about it, but she has practically swept the entire ocean for them. At least as far as she dares to go.

She dresses herself in a COMMANDING ATTIRE that proudly displays her  sign of a multi-pointed spire. She quite likes her sign, even if she hates what she has done to it. It, along with everything in her hive, is in slightly brighter, stranger hues than normal, that along with the right type of illumination orbs produce a very normal-looking effect. She'd like to take credit for that, but it was her hivemate that set it up.

Her massive, multi-pointed horns can sometimes get in the way, but damn if it doesn't feel amazing to be the biggest badass in a group with rad horns like hers. Her hair is black with violet accents and she keeps it just beyond shoulder length. Only cowards try to tame their hair or worry about the combat effectiveness of their hairstyle.

She has a healthy amount of INTERESTS, which she likes to brag about. She likes to COLLECT INTERESTING FLOATATION VEHICLES to add to her home. As befitting of her BLOOD, she has gathered many pieces of long-range explosive munitions delivery devices, or ARTILLERY if one prefers a more cultured use of language. She styles herself as an exemplary COMMANDER and tries to be a role model for the lesser land dwellers to look up to, although her friends claim that she just LIKES TO BE THEATRICAL. This is further proven by how she  CULLS ANY TRESPASSERS into her territory rather than leading them.

She also likes to COLLECT WEALTH, even though it's mostly just to fit with her noble schtick. Ok, maybe she does like the glitter a little bit, what sea dweller doesn't?

Her trolltag is  commandingGrandeur  and she likes to speak  in a way that proves Mirane's calm leadership.

She has just gotten off a chat with one of her friends. While she thinks he is a coward who should grow a spine and talk to Prinat himself, she also appreciates that he sought out her in her role as the commander of their group. This was obviously an attempt at flattery, but that doesn't make it any less true.

And she also doesn't really want him to talk to Prinat himself, because the last time those two were in the same room they were actively trying to cull one another. And not in the more acceptable kind of hatred where it's really just foreplay. She can't have her engineer or archeologist dying on her just before the biggest score of her life is around the corner, but she is also sick of playing the ashen mediator to their hoofbeast crap.

Her secondary vocal cords let out a little growl in annoyance and she doesn't stifle it; It's time to bother the spiteful little land dweller.

\-- commandingGrandeur  [CG]  began chatting with armoredGenius  [AG] at 12:25 --  
  
CG: Attention engineer, the Commander wishes to discuss your progress.  
AG: Great. Clam-ander. Hard-bass. Has. Arrived.  
CG: Stow the attitude engineer, and the fish-puns, the Commander desires to implement a backup plan for the game.  
AG: Like. What? It. Is. Not. Like. I. Am. Busy. Just. Making. It. Playable. In. The. First. Place. Right?  
AG: That. Was. Sarcasm. I. Am. Very. Busy.  
CG: Nonetheless, we need room to maneuver in case of unfavorable circumstances.  
AG: I. Cannot. Alter. The. Game.  
AG: Too. Busy. Just. Making. It. Work. To. Begin. With.  
CG: That is why you should recruit help from your friends.  
AG: I. Am. Not. Working. With. Gravedigger. And. The. Softie.  
CG: Your Commander was not referring to them.  
AG: >:O  
AG: No. Fuck. That.  
AG: With. A. Rusty. Sword.  
CG: Put aside your blackrom hate-bulge for a moment and do what's necessary to succeed.  
AG: Fuck. You. You. Don't. Know. Shit.  
AG: It's. Not. Like That.  
CG: Great, then you'll have no trouble doing this then. Talk to you later.  
  
\-- commandingGrandeur  [CG] ceased chatting with armoredGenius  [AG] at 12:45--

Sometimes Mirane is just so good at this leadership shit that it's amazing. She runs her ship like a streamlined battlecruiser, ready to sink all obstacles in the path towards sunken metaphorical gold. And also literal gold.

The analogy may have gotten away from her, but that's fine, she has shit to do, like inspiring dread in the hearts of land dwellers dumb enough to brave her waters.

With a leap into the moonpool next to her respiteblock, she swims rapidly through the ocean waters, listening carefully for the telltale sounds of her prey. Sounds travel much farther and faster underwater than in the air, something she will soon teach those foolish ones when she notices the sound of their floatation vessel.

Mirane swims towards the surface once she has spotted her target. Or, spotted is a bad word for it, as it is far outside her line of sight. But she can hear it, and sweeps of practice has honed her sense of underwater hearing to the point of perfection.

She reaches for her STRIFE SPECIBUS and equips her favorite piece: The GIGANTIC SPIRE LAUNCHING PLATFORM, her finest  artillerykind weapon. It menaces with so many spikes and terrifying explosive munition-launching spires that it alone accounts for at least half of her downed targets.

She dives under one last time to double-check her aim before firing her weapon, filling the sky with lines of horrifying lightning that soon rains death on its target and the vicinity around it.

A quick check underwater confirms that her target has been hit and she packs away her weapon, swimming at great speed towards the now-sunken wreckage and the injured survivors.

There's only two survivors this time, the rest couldn't handle the impact. Weaklings. Not even worth her effort to play with them any longer. She wouldn't even need to use her specibus to cull them, but she also doesn't want to take unnecessary risks.

She ignores them to begin looting the sinking ship, storing the mass of loot into her SYLLADEX using its HOARD FETCH MODUS, which doesn't allow her to take anything out of it that would lower the total wealth stored in it below a certain amount.

It's a bit of a pain to use that modus, but she likes the fact that it means she always walks around loaded with cash and valuables.

She flashes the drowning losers a smile which has more fangs than most beasts before leaping into the air and splashing back into the sea. She suddenly remembers what this must have looked like to them, since she is outside her hive and she cusses herself out for forgetting something so basic.

Can't risk letting fools who've seen her outside live. She makes a flip underwater and kicks off with her legs, sending her at high-speed toward the floating suckers, holding her hand towards them like a knife.

Once, twice, she flicks past them, leaving a hole in their thoraxes where their blood pushers used to be, dying the waters a lovely mix of indigo and blue. The indigo one keeps swimming for longer than she would have thought, flailing his weapon around as if she would be stupid enough to stay within reach. Especially when he has no chance of doing anything when she has the environmental advantage.

Once both have stopped moving, and she gives them both a twist of their necks for good measure, she begins to swim back home. This was a decent haul, and should keep the treasure-hunting pirate-wannabes out of her hair for a while longer. Keeping people away and out of one's business is like any other war-skill, you need to work on it lest you grow soft. She can't let people snoop around where she lives, that's probably what got her hivemate.

She's not going to get culled. She just needs to keep her place safe for long enough. Just long enough for Prinat to get that dumb game working and then she is out of here, hopefully forever.

One stray thought flits through her mind as she swims.

Maybe she should have given the grey human a heads up about pointing Prinat his way? He's the only one who doesn't seem to take all the caste shit seriously and she just made stuff difficult for him...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter five! I had to edit this one a lot actually because of foreshadowing stuff I forgot about writing in until literally an hour before I posted this online ^_^.  
> And I have added artwork of all the shown characters so far and will continue to do so as I introduce them!  
> Here is Mirane Portas herself!  
> 
> 
> Made this using the tools over at http://www.farragofiction.com/DollSim/


	6. Prinat Vokhai

#  Hack The Gods, Ch 6: Prinat Vokhai

There is a zone of destruction, where RAMPAGING CULLBOTS roam the land. In the center of this zone lies a looming, ANGULAR HIVE. The owner of this ominous structure is a troll named PRINAT VOKHAI and she lives here all alone.

Most trolls would be culled without a lusus around, but she has managed to play it off for this long at least, as hers has been missing for a sweep and then some. She doesn't think about it anymore.

She styles herself in very COMBAT EFFICIENT CLOTHING, but still shows off her  caste through her sign. It is a horizontal line that makes sharp, angular turns once up and once down.

Her horns stick up from her neck-long, black hair, the yellow-orange spikes jutting up and a bit backwards before making a sharp turn back over her head. She always considered her horns a bit of a disadvantage in combat, but she's secretly kind of proud of them. Her hair is kept strictly styled so as not to become too long and risk interfering with her VIOLENT LIFESTYLE.

Speaking of her lifestyle, she has several INTERESTS that pertain to it. She LIVES FOR COMBAT and does not hesitate to take any excuse to fight someone. She is also passionate about COMPUTERS and ROBOTICS, which is why her house is surrounded by roaming robots she purposefully left unchecked. She likes to KEEP HER BODY FIT to maintain her immense strength and combat prowess. She constantly BREAKS HER OWN WEAPONS mid-combat, leading to a large collection of backup-weaponry and broken pieces of shit. To fuel her expensive lifestyle, she FIGHTS RANDOM SCHMUCKS to take their weapons, food and valuables. She is CONSIDERED A BIT OF A MENACE and is proud of this fact.

Her trolltag is  armoredGenius and she  Breaks. Up. Her. Sentences. For. Emphasis. >:/

She does not have a lot of friends, because relying on others leads to weakness. She does have many enemies though, some more hateful than others.

One of her friends have just been nagging her about some fetid hoofbeast crap, which will delay her work on her latest project: A game called sGrub, which she doesn't exactly know how she came to find, but which she has been decoding and reverse-engineering to fit the architecture of their PROCESSING HUSKS.

Mirane had a good point, for once, but Prinat cannot help but to feel she's being played somehow. And whenever she feels that way, it's always because of the cowardly grave plunderer or the abominable  nerd is behind it and she wants to speak to neither of them.

But she has to at least dump some work on the nerd if she wants to finish this in any reasonable timeframe. So some amount of talking is inevitable.

\-- armoredGenius  [AG] began chatting with anomalousTailor  [AT] at 13:01 --   
  
AG: Wake. Up. You. Heinous. Pan-roasted. Pile. Of. Failure.   
AG: We. Need. To. Work. In. Parallel. To. Finish. Things. On. Time.   
AT: Good afternoon to you too.   
AT: Any chance that this means you will begin helping to develop the Realmchatter application again, rather than what I think you're going to do?   
AT: Which is to dump more things on me to do for you?   
AG: Hah. Hah. Hah. Very. Funny. Joke.   
AG: As. If. I. Wasn't. Doing. Tons. Of. Shit. For. You. You. Cretinous. Waste. Of. Oxygen.   
AT: Name one thing which you've done within the last half sweep?   
AG: >:C   
AG: Anyway. Here. Are. Some. Files. I. Need. You. To. Make. Work. With. The. Provided. Format.   
  
\-- armoredGenius  [AG]  has sent file "CmprssdSht.trl" to anomalousTailor  [AT] \--   
  
AT: This is a lot.   
AG: Don't. Complain. That's. Like. One. Tenth. Of. My. Workload.   
AG: Suck. It. Up. You. Lazy. Knowitall. Bulgesniffer.   
AT: It's fine.   
AT: It was just more than I was expecting.   
AT: Anything else you need help with, miss Genius?   
AG: Just. Shut. Up. And. Have. It. Done. Soon!   
  
\-- armoredGenius  [AG] ceased chatting with anomalousTailor  [AT] at 13:22 --

That piece of shit is so insufferable.

Why is he such an emotionless, blank-faced, fucking useless piece of shit! Why is he so DENSE? Even his comebacks sound more smug than actually spiteful. And he acts like he knows everything when he's too scared to talk to the pan-crushing, waste-chute of a grave plunderer because he knows he'll see through his shitty fucking act!

He's almost as bad as the grave plunderer, but at least that malodorous feculent taint-chafing bafoon fights back! Actually, that one is too much, you're literally going to cull him as soon as Mirane's back is turned.

Prinat leaves her processing husk in a rush to bury her fist through a less important wall next to the exit of her respiteblock. The numerous holes in the wall next to the one she just made attest to the many times this exact thing has happened before. Humans are actually absolute garbage at socializing like normal sane people and it drives her insane.

She spends at least an hour punching her frustrations out on various furniture and one errant robot that happened to get too close to her hive, before she returns to her respiteblock once more, ready to begin working on that backup plan.

Assuming the emotionless asshole does his job even halfway correctly, she can sort of figure what she'd need to do. From what she can infer so far, this game is a lot more complicated than it first appeared when she woke up with the weird disk in her hand one night. Yes, she was extremely suspicious of it at first, but the strange, broken code was a bit too intriguing to leave alone.

She's not exactly sure what kind of pan-melting idiocy she will need to plan for, however, so it's best to leave her extra room to act later. Backdoors to higher access commands are always nice, if only she could figure out how to escape the weird sandbox mode the player is put into.

Well, it's at least nice to have a challenge for once, rather than the boring task of just porting stupid broken code to work on a processing husk. Actually, now she's kind of happy she left that boring bit to the boring guy, he probably loves shit like that.

Chuckling to herself, Prinat settles in for a long day of work. Her friends better fucking appreciate this shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, chapter 6!  
> During the time between chapters I've been using this tool to make some character art: http://www.farragofiction.com/DollSim/  
> I have posted the character images in the notes of the previous chapters they were introduced in!  
> So here we go, here's Prinat Vokhai:  
> 


	7. Isak Spinner

#  Hack The Gods, Ch 7: Isak Spinner

In a vast, sprawling urban landscape filled with abandoned apartments, lies one that seems like it was ripped out of another building somewhere and placed on top of the rest.

This SPRAWLING APARTMENT is occupied by a teenage human named ISAK SPINNER. His blue-green eyes and unruly, black hair stands in clear contrast to his stark white skin. He looks like he would turn to ashes if exposed to the sunlight, which might as well have been true for all the time he spends locked indoors.

This teenage boy has many INTERESTS which he keeps listed on a note on his fridge. As one might guess, he LIKES LISTING THINGS to keep things ordered. He LIKES MAKING CLOTHES but has A STRANGE SENSE OF STYLE. He likes to HACK COMPUTERS mostly out of spite, but partially out of genuine enjoyment which he will never admit to. He prefers to MULTITASK EVERYTHING because why do one thing when you can do two or three at any time?

He's TERRIBLE AT STRIFING, partially because of his STRANGE TASTE IN WEAPONRY.

He likes to ORCHESTRATE CONVOLUTED SCHEMES INVOLVING HIS FRIENDS although he feels great shame about it. He also believes his friends would abandon him if they really knew this about him, because that's basically like having a hobby of lying to people. And he thinks he's really good at it.

He also feels alien to himself, in a way unlike the actual aliens he is friends with. He has never been able to put in words how uncomfortable he always feels, but it has haunted him his entire life and is one more thing he doesn't want his friends to know about him.

Today has been a very busy day for Isak. Several schemes he had carefully set up are about to come to fruition. And because he felt guilty about using his friend Alex as the focal point of them, he decided to add one last layer to his schemes and try to get his human friends involved with his troll friends' game.

The level of strategy needed to get Prinat to do anything he wants, which requires that she not find proof that it is what he wants, while also not directly getting involved with the one troll who seems to always see through his acting, was impressive even by his standards.

He takes no small amount of enjoyment out of the success, as he looks over the files he was just sent by the spiteful troll. While he could never get a good read on Heliax when that guy wants to remain elusive, he could also never seem to figure out Prinat's problem.

Trolls are weird. He decides to leave it at that, or else he will spiral into another spell of frustration at their alien antics.

While working on his task, he looks over the interface on a second monitor, showing mapping data belonging to the DRONES FLYING AROUND somewhere outside.

He didn't make them, Prinat did, but he got them working with his computer so he could have some kind of overview of where the heck his friends are. And also to keep an eye on them, he doesn't trust that she didn't program them to slit his throat at night.

But so far, from what they can tell, there shouldn't be enough space left unmapped on the planet to fit any of the data collected around his friends' homes. The idea that all four of them live on different planets entirely is a somewhat frightening one.

That and the mystery of why their homes had interconnected, functioning computers and a teleporting room. And where the power comes from. And for that matter, where is he connecting through the internet TO? None of the mapping data he has so far matches any data he can scrape off of the web.

Actually, now that he thinks of it, if the internet goes to different planets, should it be called an extranet? Especially since they routed it to aliens?

This sort of thing is quite frustrating to him, but he has a feeling that someone like Heliax would be overjoyed with mysterious planets to explore and enigmas to understand. And maybe Gary too, if there were hidden things to be found.

And speak of the devil, he's sent you a mes-No, wait, that's the "Commander".

\-- commandingGrandeur  [CG] began chatting with anomalousTailor  [AT] at 14:15 --   
  
CG: Heads up, your Commander may have sent her engineer  at you with a task.   
CG: And possibly riled her up a bit first.   
AT: I am aware. She has already dumped some task in my lap.   
AT: Not that I mind it. But she was unusually upset and bossy this time.   
CG: You're not exactly helping the situation, to be fair.   
AT: What do you mean? I didn't turn her down.   
AT: I am, in fact, helping right now.   
CG: Not what your Commander was referring to.   
CG: But They're not going to get involved in your quadrant drama.   
CG: Bottom line is we need whatever that task is done yesterday.   
AT: And as soon as I figure out time travel, you'll have them.   
AT: That was a joke. I am actually working on the files right now. Should not take me more than a few hours.   
CG: All right, catch you later then!   
  
\-- commandingGrandeur  [CG] ceased chatting with anomalousTailor  [AT] at 14:30 --

As usual, his troll friends confuse him enough to almost distract him from his task. Almost.

For all his efforts to appear aloof and all-knowing, their culture remains largely alien, which might be why they keep mystifying and/or irritating him. He sort of feels like an idiot when he doesn't know what's going on.

Isak makes tremendous progress on his task, far more than he had expected. After taking a moment to assess himself and his efforts, he concludes that this must be a positive effect of his otherwise tremendous mood today.

Despite the trolls' strange behaviour, he has already pulled off one successful scheme today and the birthday scheme seems successful enough. Setting it up so all of their friends would at least put in a token amount of effort, if not more so, to present Alex with a suitable gift, whilst also abusing his access to the mapped out urban sprawl to find a gift to send off himself, was not a simple task.

It is in times like these that he thinks his scheming isn't necessarily such a bad thing.

And it is after thinking such thoughts that he always reminds himself that Heliax and Prinat wouldn't be at eachothers throats trying to murder eachother if he hadn't gotten involved as smoothly as a rampaging hoofbeas- as a rampaging horse in an antique store.

He hadn't intended for them to actually, literally, try to kill each other. He had just been intrigued by a new facet of personality and culture (like he goddamn always was, acting like people are interesting toys). He'd tried to set up a little misunderstanding between the two of them, but it had been blown way out of proportion and now he doesn't dare let them know that he fucked up. And he doesn't dare to talk to Heliax because that guy just KNOWS when he's lying.

He doesn't like to think about things like this. So he doesn't. Instead he dedicates a not insignificant portion of his brainpower to keeping those thoughts far away from whatever he's doing.

While Isak sits in his sprawling apartment, he thinks that he's gotten quite good at lying to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, chapter 7!  
> And here is Isak Spinner's Echeladder!  
> 


	8. Ordnel Format

#  Hack The Gods, Ch 8: Ordnel Format

In a BUSTLING HIVESTEM resides many trolls, only one of which is relevant for this story. His name is ORDNEL FORMAT and he manages to survive just fine on his own.

It helps that all of his close neighbours owe him enough favors to help cover for his lack of a lusus whenever inspections come around.

While Ordnel doesn't think much of the caste system, he still displays  his sign on his clothes, in the shape of a stylised heart with horns similar to his own. Speaking of which, his own horns stand out from his unruly mass of hair, looking like two halves of a heart as well. He's very satisfied with how that matches up so nicely.

He has several INTERESTS to fill his day to day life with. His main hobby is to INVOLVE HIMSELF IN OTHERS QUADRANTIC AFFAIRS; he simply loves to find out about the latest scandals and theorise about future pairings. He enjoys SINGING VERY EMOTIONALLY, which makes his closest neighbours glad for the distance and thick walls of their hives. He is also an AMATEUR ARTISTIC PAPER FOLDER, which he practises his TELEKINESIS on.

Sometimes he HAS TROUBLE STAYING CALM but he has his best friend to help him, usually. They've been friends for as long as he can remember, and moirails since at least four sweeps, give or take a few perigees. He's the only one who knows her real caste, besides her custodian. He tries to visit her in person when he can, but he can't really get to her hive, it's just WAY too dangerous for him.

His trolltag is  guidingAdjutant and he  Z_z always shows how he feels before talking and GETS EMOTIONAL SOMETIMES FOR EMPHASIS!

He had planned to talk to his most important friend today, but they were asleep when he was awake, so instead he went to sleep and he hasn't woken up since then. Since a sleeping troll is boring to watch, it would be better to go somewhere else.

\--- SOMEWHERE ELSE ---

Ordnel Format is walking down the golden streets, wearing exquisite, golden clothes. He used to feel a little weirded out by how it seemed that he was pretending to be of Noble blood, but he has gotten used to it since.

It helps that the clothes are so comfortable and that the friendly, white carapace-people who live in this golden city treat him so reverently. It didn't take long for him to feel like this was a second hive to him, even though it was only in his dreams.

But today he has been feeling a little bit lonely, despite the people around him. He had gone to sleep hoping to meet his most important friend, but she had woken up shortly after he went to sleep.

So now he is just walking along the streets, enjoying the time he has until he'll wake up. Occasionally, he looks up at the sky. He can almost see the clouds now, it shouldn't be long until they're properly within sight.

Watching the clouds roll by is another pastime he has. He wouldn't say it's one of his interests though, because he doesn't always like what he sees. The glimpses through time and space that he can observe in the clouds have been more unnerving as of late.

Just as he thinks that, he can see into one of the clouds. He sees someone holding a picture of his moirail swimming. Swimming OUTSIDE her hive, where her clever little trick of the light won't protect her.

This is bad. This is actually terrible.

He can feel himself starting to panic, he NEEDS to tell her, quickly! Maybe she has fallen asleep again?

He rushes through the streets towards the four enormous towers: His own, his moirail's and two decrepit, broken towers whose owners were long gone and forgotten when he first woke up here.

He curses himself out when he remembers that he can fly here and simply begins to charge through the air, upwards to his friend's room. Finally, he arrives, but unfortunately she's still asleep in this world.

Ordnel tries to calm down, but it's not working. His blood pusher's beating hard, his green blood is roiling from fear and worry. Fight or flight instincts kick in full strength while he hopes to wake up, his secondary vocal cords making growling noises like a threatened barkbeast. Please wake up, please wake up, please wake up!

And as if by a miracle, he feels himself falling asleep, his vision fading as a sigh of relief slips past his lips.

\--- Back somewhere same ---

Ordnel practically leaps out of his RECUPERACOON, soporific slime flying everywhere as he rushes to grab his HUSKTOP. Clothes and cleaning can come later, right now he has other priorities.

\-- guidingAdjutant  [GA] began chatting with commandingGrandeur  [CG] at 16:22 --  
  
GA: XO CG ANSWER QUICKLY! THIS IS SUPER-DUPER IMPORTANT!!!  
GA: X_X WE'RE TALKING "GETTING CULLED ASAP" LEVELS HERE!  
CG: What? What's going on?  
GA: :S I SAW IN THE CLOUDS! SOMEONE HAS A PICTURE OF YOU SWIMMING! OR SOMEONE IS GOING TO HAVE ONE!  
CG: That's… That's absolutely awful.  
CG: Your Commander's going to contact her engineer, the project is now top priority.  
CG: Do what you need to do to prepare, your Commander doesn't know exactly when we can begin.  
GA: o7 Aye Aye Commander, I'll get on it.  
  
\-- guidingAdjutant  [GA] ceased chatting with commandingGrandeur  [CG] at 16:35 --

Ordnel's beating blood pusher finally calms down a bit. His moirail's calm attitude always helped with that, she never panicked when push came to shove, although he could tell she was shaken.

He knows that when she told him to get ready, she didn't think he had anything important to do. It was more about not being busy with other stuff, but as a matter of fact he did have something vitally important to do. He had simply thought it could wait a bit until later, perhaps after they got to celebrate his human friend's "human birthday".

He walked over to his CRYSTALLINE DISPLAY CUBE and opened it, taking out a very ornate beakbeast made of folded, golden paper.

It was probably actual gold, now that he thought of it, since he had taken it from the golden city. He wasn't sure HOW he did it, but it had been in his hand when woke up after he made two of these together with his moirail.

He stored it in his SYLLADEX using his PAPER FOLDING FETCH MODUS. This was going to be his backup plan, just in case.

The paper figure's twin was currently safely out of this world, in a nice gift wrapping waiting to be unpacked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's up! The final character of our eight! I had to take a few days off to do some other stuff and clear my head, but I've still got plans for this fic!
> 
> Anyway, here's Ordnel Format, again made using the fantroll maker: http://www.farragofiction.com/DollSim/  
> 
> 
> I am planning on commissioning some actual artwork of the eight of them eventually too ^^.


End file.
